Guilt Beyond Conviction: The Theory of Residual Doubt in Indian Capital Sentencing

The Indian law on capital sentencing is rife with conflicting standards, which has made the process of adjudication increasingly discretionary over the years. In an attempt to reduce such arbitrariness, the Indian Supreme Court recently borrowed ‘the doctrine of residual doubt’ from the American legal system. The theory is premised on the idea that the notion of ‘doubt’ is not absolute, but rather of varying degrees. Viewed in the context of the irrevocable nature of capital punishment, the Venn diagrams of doubt and state-sanctioned execution must never intersect. This doctrine attempts to create a higher burden of proof at the stage of sentencing by precluding the possibility of death when any ‘lingering doubt’ is found to exist – that is, beyond ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of the doctrine on the Indian law on capital punishment. The authors first study the efficacy (or arbitrariness) of the prevailing tests employed by the Indian courts in their death penalty jurisdiction. Second, the authors introduce the doctrine of residual doubt by looking into its origins in American jurisprudence. Third, the authors attempt to answer the question as to whether – and how – the theory can provide a fairer mechanism for adjudicating capital punishment in India. Given the variance between the American jury system and the Indian judicial process, the authors recommend that the theory ought to be modified through structural and definitional changes to effectively counter the widening margin of discretion exercised by the Indian Supreme Court. The theory of residual doubt would thus find legitimacy based on the moral and legal justification of protecting from death any individual whose case has not been proved with ‘absolute certainty - that is the existence of ‘no doubt’